


Grounded Sparrow

by Angelic_Xia



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: BAMF Sawada Tsunayoshi, Disabled Character, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-26
Packaged: 2021-01-27 07:23:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21388306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Angelic_Xia/pseuds/Angelic_Xia
Summary: When Hayato was sent to befriend Reborn's new student - the local assassin's son - in his tiny little back-of-nowhere Japanese hometown, he expected the wheelchair. It's why he was asked, apparently, because of his mother. What he didn't expect was an adorable little sparrow, badass and sexy despite being grounded.In which Iemitsu and Timoteo fucked up worse than normal, and Tsuna pays the consequences and reaps the rewards. He likes his life, thanks, and the old men in Italy can go hang.And thanks for the pretty boyfriend.
Relationships: Gokudera Hayato/Sawada Tsunayoshi, Hibari Kyouya/Yamamoto Takeshi
Comments: 32
Kudos: 187





	1. Chapter 1

He walks out into the hall and immediately notices a scuffle happening just a few feet away: a tiny brunette is attempting to ward off a quartet of what look like sports jocks from her seat in an awkwardly-placed chair. He looks again; it’s not a chair, but a wheelchair. What the -?

“Oi! Git! Go on, before I scream for the DC. Shame on you, bullying a tiny kid in a wheelchair! What would your parents think! Shame on you and your family!” He sounds like his grandma, but that’s a good thing; for an Italian lady barely taller than this girl might be standing and pushing 70 his Nonna - his Mamma's madre - is a terrifying woman. They run. “Hey, stranger-san, are you all right?” The kid looks up at him and -

Oh, no. Oh, hell no. This is _not_ happening. The kid is absolutely adorable, and plainly not a little kid at all for all he’s tiny and waiflike, and not a girl despite the long hair. Definitely not a girl.

“Ano, thanks. For - for the rescue.” At least the brunet is blushing as much as he is? He’s even cuter when he’s Storm-Flame-crimson. “I’m Yamamoto Tsuna. Please, call me Tsuna.” Oh, even better, this is the kid Reborn’s called him in to meet. He was expecting some helpless, arrogant prince expecting to be waited on, not this absolute paragon of cuteness.

“Gokudera Hayato. Ah, if this isn’t too forward, would you like to have lunch with me later?”

The kid - Tsuna - sparkles up at him and nods, even more attractive than before. “Un!”

* * *

“Oh, gods, Takeshi, I am gone. So gone. Goner than you on Kyōya. Takeshi, what do I do? He wants to have lunch with me! With _me_! Was it pity? He saved me from Mochida and his shadows, was he feeling sorry for the poor bullied kid in a wheelchair? Was he -” His brother cuts him off.

“Tsu! Slow down. Tell me what happened. All I’m getting is that Mochida and I need to have _words_ again later and you got asked to eat lunch with someone?”

“Not just someone, ‘Keshi! He was so pretty and I made an absolute fool of myself.” He groans into his arms, folded on his brother's desk. "Keshi, I'm attracted to him. I think he's pretty and I want to sit him on my lap and kiss him until he's squirming and mark him so everyone can see and I'm _not supposed to be able to want that_!"

He can feel the air of stunned silence, the shock from Takeshi. Tou-chan hadn't kept anything back from either of them, and one of the effects of the seal was apparently the inability to start puberty properly. He hadn't minded at all, because there'd not been anyone he was even the least bit inclined to spend time with besides Takeshi and Kyōya, and they were so much each other's it was literally painfully evident. Also, he didn't want to stop being feminine. He liked not having hair everywhere and staying thin and slender. He didn't _want_ to get stupidly tall and broad and hairy, like the few photos he saw of his idiot biological donor.

But now? Now it just might be worth it, to be able to do more than just kiss that pretty silver-haired teen he'd run into.

"Oh, man, Tsu, you got it bad. You're practically drooling over this guy! He must be something, huh? Look at it this way, at least he's probably not in our class!"

"Kiritsu! Rei!" He bows from his chair and then wheels over to his own desk.

"Before I get started, we need to welcome a new student into the class! This is Gokudera Hayato, who just moved from Italy with his mother." He stares in shock as the unfairly pretty boy from before walks into the room and immediately fixes those gorgeous jade eyes on him. He can't help but drop onto the desk. He feels Takeshi lean over the aisle and mumbles a reassurance that it's not his ataxia acting up again, and his brother retreats after a soothing shoulder squeeze.

"Name's Gokudera Hayato. Please don't call me anything unless you're worth my time. Probably won't join any clubs, as I have someone to take care of. Oh, and I can't stand bullying." He chances a look up and Gokudera is still staring at him. Intently.

"Gokudera-kun, you can sit in front of Yamamoto-chan, there on the outside back row."

He spends the rest of the lesson alternately taking notes and fantasising about kissing the gorgeous green-eyed silver-blond in front of him breathless, and spends the next the same way. By the time lunch rolls around Takeshi is barely holding back laughter, and he barely notices the kiss on the forehead as Takeshi leaves to 'talk' to Mochida and spend the rest of lunch feeding his boyfriend.

"So if you already had a boyfriend why did you accept my offer of lunch, Yamamoto Tsuna?"

"Bwah? Me? Boyfriend? Who would look at me like that? I'm just No-legs Tsuna." He's staring at his pretty, grumpy fantasy in shock, unsure.

"Yeah, that sure looked like a boyfriend to me. I guess he's kinda cute, if you like stupidly tall athletes."

The grumpiness suddenly makes sense, but he still can't help himself; despite the fact it's making Gokudera stare at him like he's crazy, he just laughs. "Oh, Gokudera-kun. No, no, no. Me and Takeshi? Haah, kami, no. He's my brother! Come on, follow me and I'll explain." Gokudera is patient as they wheel out into the hall and towards the genkan, and only hovers briefly as he switches from his school chair to his everyday chair. Once they're outside and at his normal lunch spot under the tree, Gokudera makes a questioning noise.

"So, when I was little there was an accident. I came out of it with severe damage to the proprioceptive nerves in my legs and intermittent balance and dizziness issues. My biological donor was involved, and skipped town before I'd even made it to the hospital. Kaa-chan divorced him, and when she got us the new house moved in with Yamamoto Tsuyoshi, Takeshi's dad. He helped raise me, and he's my dad too in all the ways that count. They got married about three years ago, and I’m on his family register now - ah, that’s like adoption, but doesn’t carry the stigma it does in Italy. I really can't see Takeshi that way. He's my brother. Kami, he's seen more of me than I care to admit. He's _cleaned_ more of me than either of us like to remember. He's helped me change, gotten me in and out of the bath, pulled me off toilets. No, he's firmly categorised as my brother. You, on the other hand …" They both blush, Gokudera turning a very cute pink. "Never actually been attracted to anyone before, but you? Mm. You're very pretty, and -" He cuts himself off and pulls an unsuspecting Gokudera into his lap. "Can I call you Hayato?"

Hayato nods, nose brushing his, and he tilts his head just a bit and leans up slightly, and a shock goes through him as their lips meet. "Ah, Tsuna, Tsuna wait. We shouldn't be -"

He pulls his pretty silver-haired Hayato down again and murmurs against his lips. "I don't care. Want you. Want to kiss you breathless, mark you as mine, watch you squirm in my lap." Finally Hayato moans, melts into him, lets him kiss him again and again, lets him taste that slim neck and slender jaw, opens for him, wraps his arms around his neck as his own hands wind into that pretty silver hair.

He'd just managed to get his hands under the uniform shirt when a familiar voice interrupts. "Hahah! Wow, otouto. Way to find your hormones." Hayato yelps, pulling away, but he holds the other teen firmly in his lap.

"Damn, don't sneak up on me like that! Idiota." His brother just laughs at the prickly boy trying to escape his hold.

"I'll tell the teachers I had Gokudera-kun take you home. Here." Hayato gets slapped in the face with a red armband. "Kyōya said since Tsu-chan is so attached to you already you're assigned to him as bodyguard and helper. Welcome to the Disciplinary Committee."

* * *

He hears the crunching of wheels on the gravel walkway outside the restaurant and grabs the crutches from behind the aprons. Something must be wrong if his younger son is at the restaurant this early; it's barely after lunch, and Tsuna usually doesn't leave school until just before the last class of the day on Thursdays - he's excused from PE and that's class 2-A's timeslot those days.

"Hayato, that's really not necessary. I've been doing this for what, almost seven, eight years now? I can walk through one door, sweetheart." He hears spluttering, followed by a high whine, and Tsuna's laughter, and almost splutters himself; just what is going on?!

"Tou-san, ano, I need some advice and I want you to meet someone!" His son stomps unevenly, awkwardly through the door and takes the crutches gratefully, and swings himself forward a few steps. "Just put it to the left of the door, sweetheart, and come sit down with us."

Then he does choke, because pulling Tsuna's chair through the door is not his silly eldest, but a head of silver hair and flashing green eyes set in a pale, slim face: the Harrying Falcon, Aquila di Falco. "Tsuna, musuko, get behind me. Quickly." Tsuna ignores him, tucking a crutch between arm and ribs and holding his hand out to the baby hitman.

"Hayato, come on, sweetheart, Tou-san won't hurt you." Tsuna turns burning caramel eyes threaded with orange on him. "Will you." Oh. Well.

"Maa, maa. If that's how it is, I suppose not. Welcome, Aquila."

The baby hitman pales, turning to face him, and then searching the walls before staring at Shigure Kintoki behind the bar. "Gokudera Hayato, please, Shigure-sama. If I had known you were the local assassin I was told about I'd have introduced myself days ago. Please excuse my manners."

Tsuna looks confused for half a second, then shrugs. "Let's sit and talk, hmm? Will you sit in my lap again, sweetheart? Or is it your turn?" Maa, maa, this is a story.


	2. Chapter 2

Aquila di Falco, who prefers the name his Mamma gave him, had had a pretty okay life, considering. He was born to parents who at the very least seemed to like each other (they were sappy idiots, okay?), lived in a castle, and had a doting older sister. His Mamma taught him piano, his uncle visited a lot, and he actually saw his Papa more than at dinner - the man would sit with his children in their favorite sitting room while they played, or come listen to he and his mother at lessons, or let them sit quietly in his office while he worked alone.

No, the problem was his Papa's wife. Who wasn't his Mamma. When he was six years old, his mother was coming back from a day out with friends when her car was run off the road. It wasn't an accident.

She wasn't supposed to survive.

When it was found his Papa's wife, Bianchi's mother, had tried to have his Mamma - Lavina - killed, his Papa had been furious, and also sad. Furious because how dare his wife overstep. It was a loveless, arranged marriage to cement an alliance, and there was even a mistress clause that, surprisingly, went both ways after their first child. Sad because it meant that if she would go as far as hiring a two-bit hitman to attempt to murder his Mamma who she never showed signs of disliking, then what would she do to get rid of him, who she actively and visibly despised? The answer was try to get Bianchi, with her ability to poison everything she cooked, to force-feed him her cookies. Her purple, smoking cookies.

So he was packed off with hugs and kisses and tears to live with his zio Shamal and his Mamma, and sent combat tutors, and the announcement was made to the mafia at large that while Aquila - now calling himself Gokudera Hayato with both parents' approval - was his father's beloved son, he was not and never would be his father's heir so long as his sister lived.

There was his Mamma's physical therapy, and then piano tours, and lessons, and finally his combat tutors declared him more than competent. He took a few hits to prove he was dangerous, make a name for himself, so that everyone would leave him and his Mamma alone, but then came an offer neither of them could refuse.

Reborn had called on them, saying he was tutoring the local assassin's younger son in a town in Japan that had his mother wanting this opportunity for him - apparently that's where his Jii-san came from, and is a sanctuary town, a Flame haven. His job was simple. This kid badly needed friends. He needed friends who could understand him, who wouldn't pity him for his disability and need for a wheelchair, but who wouldn't ignore it either. Hayato had never been all that good at making friends himself, so when the offer came, with a place in a good school and an accessible apartment near the shopping area by the same school regardless of if he made friends with the kid or not and a possible friendship?

His Mamma, now out of her own wheelchair, still needs a lot of help. Not a lot of places in Italy are accessible, and the streets are hell. His Mamma may be more mobile now, but to be able to live in a place where the streets are even, free of debris, wide, and where most businesses have no need of stairs at the front door? Even his Papa thinks it's a good idea. So they say goodbye, with promises to visit and to video chat every week and to send tickets to any shows his Mamma would have, and a promise from Bianchi and her husband to come check on them once they've settled in, and they're on their way to Namimori.

He tells himself again that falling for Reborn's student at first sight is perfectly acceptable. After all, love at first sight is why he exists. It's why his Mamma exists. It runs in the family.

* * *

"So _that's_ why you asked me to eat lunch with you?!" The cute brunet in his lap sounds absolutely heartbroken. "Because it was your job?" Oh, crap. No, no, no, no! There he goes, putting his Stormy, Electric foot in it again.

"No, Tsuna-chan, no! I wasn't even supposed to talk to you until I was introduced, but you were just so cute, and I couldn't help it. Both sides of my family tend to fall hard and fast, and I guess I'm no exception." Tsuna stops trying to squirm out of his lap - and Goddamnit that is not helping his composure _or_ his cock - and sinks back into it, looking him in the eye.

"Really?!" Oh, that pout's adorable.

"Really. You're just too cute and I want to cuddle you and kiss you forever." He presses a kiss to one flushed cheek, then rests his chin on Tsuna's shoulder. For all that he's four inches shorter, Tsuna's nearly the same height as him sitting down.

"Anyways, Tou-san, that's why I'm here. I like kissing Hayato-kun, I do, but one day that's not going to be enough, right?" He almost chokes; that was not what he was expecting. "And for that to happen I need more hormones in my system than it seems I have. I really enjoyed the kissing and I felt something like that thing near the bottom of my spine you mentioned - good to know I've got working nerves there - but, aa, nothing from my cock? At all? And if we manage that then I'm going to grow and change and, and …" There's a thread of panic from the boy in his lap, and he hugs Tsuna and kisses the side of his neck in an attempt to calm him down.

"Can I ask why you're panicking, Tsuna?" Then it happens. Tsuna jerks in his arms, and lists, and moans; he's heard enough nauseated moaning to know that's what he's hearing now. Yamamoto-san pulls a bowl out from under his chair and holds it out - 'just in case' - and he takes it just in time to get it under Tsuna's chin as he vomits. He holds Tsuna upright and slightly forward, making sure he won't choke, and looks at the older man for answers.

"Aa, I suppose you should know. He'd want me to tell you."

* * *

Tsuna's family is a lonely one, the father never home and the mother struggling to raise a bright, active son on her own. Little Tsu-chan has made one friend, recently: the popular, cheery Yamamoto Takeshi, whose recently-widowed father runs the best sushi restaurant Nana - Tsuna's mother - has ever eaten at. The parents, too, become friends, and Tsuyoshi is just wondering whether to tell her about Flames - her child is a Sky so close to Active his eyes bleed orange and he sparks at the fingers and third eye - when the absent father returns home, this time with his Boss.

There's been an accident, Nana says from the hospital, and he drops the phone and runs out of the restaurant, startling his customers and dragging Takeshi from his snack. When they get there, Nana is crying, Tsuna is in surgery, and Nana tells him no one is picking up at home, where she'd left her husband and his Boss.

Tsuna had been playing, she tells him, and Iemitsu had told her to go take some time for herself; he'd watch Tsuna. She didn't question it, didn't question why Iemitsu suddenly wanted to spend time with the child he'd been ignoring and terrifying in turns. Then Tsuna screams, and she looks up from the sink just in time to see her baby hit a branch, and Iemitsu watching with hard eyes, standing but doing nothing.

By the time she makes it to the backyard Iemitsu has picked his limp son up by the middle, letting him hang from his arms, spine curved sickeningly far backwards, as his boss fiddles around by Tsuna's fluffy head. She _loses_ it.

Miura-san and her husband across the fence had seen Tsuna hit the branch and called an ambulance and told her so, and by the time the ambulance techs get there she's laid Tsuna carefully straight and flat and laid into the two men and told them to pack and be ready to leave by the time she gets home, but that she wants them to stay put until she can get back and talk to her husband.

It turns out the two men had left within minutes of Nana getting into the ambulance with her son, and no amount of calling any of the numbers her husband had left her has gotten any response by the time Tsuna wakes up three days later.

It's just an hour after he wakes up that Tsuna enters what looks like a stroke, and not long after that the doctors tell them that this active, bright boy is likely never going to run again, and that it will take work for him to even walk. The damage Iemitsu had done by moving Tsuna, letting him hang like that, has severed nerves; left Tsuna with damage to the nerves in his pelvis and what seems like even worse damage to the proprioceptive nerves - the ones that tell his brain where things are and how they're moving - all through his legs. Something - likely the hit to his head as he landed - has caused vestibular ataxia, though luckily it seems like it's not getting any worse and seems to be intermittent; there doesn't seem to be any cognitive damage. He'll probably have attacks just like that his whole life, though (especially when stressed or scared), and he'll never quite be able to tell exactly where his legs are and how fast or forceful his leg movements are.

Nana begins steps to divorce her husband soon after that, and it goes through swiftly with evidence from the nanny cam she'd had turned on and pointed at the yard. The officials are heavily sympathetic to her case, the active endangerment of her son by his father and the fact the man didn't even stay to make sure Tsuna would be okay was more than enough, especially considering he'd left what turned out to be false contact information and that that was the first time he'd been home since before Tsuna had been born.

A year later sees Nana moving out of her ex-husband's house, leaving the keys and all the furniture behind, and moving into a one-story open plan house halfway between the school and the market, inviting the man who had never let her down to move in with his son. Two years later, after helping raise each others' sons and going through doctors and therapies and bullies and coping with the realities of Tsuna's situation they got engaged, and had married two years after that when their boys were ten.

* * *

Tsuna had chimed in here and there with various sassy and snarky comments in a steadily more comprehensible voice, and by the time the story is done he no longer needs to be held up. He's rinsed his mouth out and eaten a bit of food, even though he needed the glass held for him and to be fed, which has made him more than a bit grumpy, which is even more adorable and he kisses the little Sky - his pretty Tsuna is a Sky! - again.

"Anyways, what that all leads into is the fact that my currently very attached son's ataxia is due to the Seal, which also stunts his hormones and makes it vanishingly unlikely he'll manage full puberty unless it's removed, and that would mean he'd go through all those physical changes and you don't want that, do you, Tsu-chan?" His Tsuna buries his face against a spot on his neck that feels bruised and mouths at it. "That would be a no, wouldn't it?"

"Don't want to look like _him_, Tou-chan. He's all big and square and broad and hairy and looking like that makes me feel sick to my stomach. I like looking feminine or ambiguous, Hayato-kun. I don't care if I get taller and don't mind if I get broader in proportion with any growing I do, but I want to stay thin and willowy and maybe a bit curvy? Like being male, like having the parts I do, just don't want to be …”

He exchanges a look with the man sitting across from him before making an offer he'll probably be well and truly scolded for. "I know how you feel, Tsuna, and I … I might know someone who can help? You see, my uncle is Shamal? Trident Shamal? And he can manipulate DNA. He's done it to me, with my Papa's permission as well as my Mamma's, and he'd be willing to make you look the way you want without dealing with hormone treatments and mundane hoops if Mamma and I tag-team him."

Tsuyoshi is looking at him in pure relief and Tsuna with the most hope he's ever seen on one face. He knows he's made the right decision, even as a voice speaks up from the doorway.

"Well, ragazzo mio, if you're offering to sweet-talk your zio for il piccolo passerotto in your lap you must be in deep."


	3. Chapter 3

Gokudera Lavina had thought her whirlwind courtship of sixteen days was fast, and her mother's of ten faster, but her darling figlio had both of them beat at a grand total of four.

Hours.

His padre is going to skin him to the fingertips screaming at him and then congratulate him, knowing her silly love. At least her son has taste, unlike his flighty zio.

"I was shocked when the school called and told me you had been assigned as mentor to the very boy we were brought here for you to meet and seemed to be very happy to kiss him senseless as well, but to see you sat there with marks on your neck and the same silly look on your face your Papa gives me is both worrying and beautiful." She turns to the man sat at the table with her figlio and his love, obviously the boy's father for all he didn't look it. "Gokudera Lavina, Yamamoto-san. I'm the reason my son was asked to meet yours." She sees him take in her walking crutches and obvious scars. "My Angelo's wife was jealous, and tried to have me killed. Silly woman got it into her head I was threatening her place, and my son her daughter's. As if their marriage contract had no clauses for lovers and their children. My Hayato would only inherit if something happened to Bianchi, and I love the girl like she's my own."

The tiny sparrow her son is cradling looks at her and asks, "Were you in a wheelchair?"

She smiles. "I was, sweetheart, for a long time, and still need it sometimes. Hayacchi is such a darling about it." She sits in the offered chair, and sips at the tea her son pours her after a nod from Yamamoto. "Mm. This is delicious, thank you. Yes, he'll try to do things the way I need at first, but just let him know your limits and strengths and he'll adapt. I believe we live in the building a few cross-streets down from your home, so please treat us kindly."

"Yes, we looked at that to begin with but the apartments just weren't big enough for both our boys, and we wanted one home, not two. Speaking of, why don't you show your boyfriend the study room in the back, Tsu-chan?"

After the boys are gone to change into day clothes (she had brought Hayato a change, knowing the school uniform wasn't comfortable for him), Tsuna babbling about pillows and sprawling chairs and cuddles, she looks Yamamoto Tsuyoshi in the eye. "Should I be worried?"

The man across from her scoffs. "Hardly. I'm more worried about your Hayato-kun. One of Tsuna's issues is a Flame Seal that means he's in severely restricted puberty. Until today I would swear he'd never kiss anyone, and then he comes home with your son, baby hitman that he is, and tells me with threads of orange in his eyes not only that he enjoys kissing him and he's aroused by it but physically unable to, well," The man coughs and skips over the subject. ”… but that one day he wants to be able to have sex with him. One day one of my boys is going to give me a heart attack, whether it's Takeshi and his insistence that being beaten half to death is the best sort of foreplay or Tsuna and his tendency to throw himself headlong into anything that looks or seems interesting. At least he doesn’t drop things just as fast."

She's laughing now, because that description of Tsuna sounds just like Bianchi's husband. "That might be a Sky thing, Yamamoto-san. Bianchi's husband is just the same."

* * *

He's sitting in Tsuna's lap again, and kissing him is so sweet. Teaching him how to kiss feels better than kissing anyone in Italy ever had. Even with the lack of an erection under him he knows Tsuna is enjoying this; it's in the way he clings, the way he moans, the sweet words in his ear, the marks decorating his neck and jaw, ringing his throat like a necklace.

"Mm, wearing my marks like this, everyone will know you belong to me, that I have the prettiest boy in the school, in the town squirming in my lap every day, holding me close, going on dates with me, and they'll all wonder what you see in me, wonder how I tricked you into dating me, with your don't-waste-my-time attitude this morning. But we both know what they don't. You begged to be mine, sweetheart, didn't you?" Oh, he did, and he moans his agreement, which makes his little Sky throw his head back and hiss in pleasure.

He's the one sucking marks into that gorgeous neck now, low enough the uniform's shirt collar will cover them, hide them from those who couldn't see Tsuna's worth. "Dio, Tsuna, I know part of this is Sky Attraction and part is the hormones hitting you hard but I want to be yours, want to be kept close, and I know that's all me, that the only thing that's influenced is the intensity. Want to be your friend and your love and later your lover. Want to go on dates, make you smile, learn what you love and what you don't, want you to learn the same of me, want to be the reason you smile." Tsuna squirms and he slips backwards off the smaller teen's lap into the inviting pile of squishy pillows on the giant chair-thing they're on. Seriously, what is this thing even called?

"Mm. That'd be nice. You want to take me on dates?" He nods. "Then come with me to the aquarium on Saturday. I have Saturdays off since those are PE days for 2-A. Come with me and I'll show you how I like to spend some of my time."

He smiles, soft. "That sounds great, Tsuna. Now, after that attack and the kissing, are you tired?" Tsuna shakes his head, but then locks his jaw, throat working, eyes screwing shut as he stifles a yawn and fails. His jaw opens wide, pink tongue curling, and a sound like a cat comes out of the brunet's throat. "Yes you are, gattino. Come on, curl into me and nap. I'll wake you in an hour and a half, passerotto?"

As Tsuna curls into the crook of his shoulder, he hears a mumbled, "pass'rotto?"

"Means 'sparrow', Tsuna-chan. Mamma called you that and it fits. It's an Italian pet name for adorable loves." His little passerotto nods, breathing already evening out.

Tsuyoshi pokes his head into the converted dojo just as his sparrow finally falls fully asleep. "Good; he's out. You must be exhausted, too, Hayato-kun. You've only been here a few days, and it's what, ten in the morning in Italy? According to your internal clock you've been up all night."

He yawns himself. "Eight, but yeah, I'm exhausted. Need to adjust, though." Tsuyoshi covers them both with a soft, fluffy, rusty orange blanket, heavier than it looks like it should be, and comforting for it. "Sleep. The two of you -" obviously meaning he and his mother, as Japanese relies heavily on subtext, suggestion, and context, a huge change from his native Italian, "- are staying for dinner, so I'll send your mother in when it's time to eat. Sleep."

He's so tired and the blanket is so comforting that he can't help but snuggle back into the soft pillows, cuddling his boyfriend - and he smiles at the thought, that this beautiful creature in his arms is his boyfriend - to his chest as he fades out.

* * *

He wakes up to his Mamma shaking him gently, and she shushes him and holds out the bowl from before. "I was told there's a fifty-fifty chance il tuo piccolo passerotto is going to need this when you wake him up, Hayacchi."

"Grazie, Mamma." He gently lifts Tsuna up, whispering in his ear, waking him up gently. She's right. Tsuna's eyes open and almost instantly start wheeling and he vomits neatly into the bowl. He can hold himself up, but he's having trouble speaking and he can't stop his eyes from moving.

"H'yo, 'vryth'n'sss m'vvv'nn." He covers Tsuna's eyes and starts pressing gentle kisses to flushed cheeks.

"Don't speak just yet, dolce. I'm here, we're on the study room couch, and I doubt anything could move this thing short of a determined Cloud. Shh." Slowly he feels Tsuna's eyes stop twitching and he removes his hand. "Better?"

Tsuna spits into the bowl a few times and nods. "Th'nks, Haayato. Wakinn' up's always t'rrible onn my bad d'ys." He feels Tsuna testing his legs and arms carefully, and the wince as they jerk heavily. "Gonn' need Kyōya t'carry me in."

"Nope!" He slides off the couch and carefully pulls Tsuna into his arms, lifting him slowly as he drags his Cloud to the surface, Propagating his strength. "I've got you. I'll always have you now." Tsuna blushes. "Told you, dolce, we fall hard and fast. You're stuck with me now. I'll always be by your side as long as you want me there. Now, are you hungry?" Tsuna nods against his chest. "Then let's go eat. I can't wait to meet everyone."

* * *

There is something wrong with Sawada Nana-chan, she decides. She had already been feeling a bit uneasy around her, the woman a bit too cheerful and a bit too friendly and strangely detached under all that cheer, but the instant she tells _her Hayacchi_ to call her his mother her normally nonexistent Flames _flare_. Hard.

“Maa maa, Nana-koi, Hayato-kun already has a wonderful mother, right next to you!” Nana flinches, turning and bowing, babbling nervous apologies.

“I’m so, so sorry, Gokudera-san! I don’t mean to be so scattered and familiar. There’s something wrong with the way I treat people, but at least I acknowledge it and am working on it. I’m so glad I’ve got Tsuyo with me, or I might have done badly by my Tsuna.” Ah, so there’s why. At least the woman knows she has issues and is coping well with them. “Would ba-chan be okay? Tsuyo says Tsu-kun is genuinely happy and has started talking about puberty and why he hasn’t wanted to grow and if your Hayato-kun can do that where no one else has then even if they don’t stay together I don’t think he’ll be letting go.”

“It’s fine, Nana-san. If Hayacchi wants to, he can.” She thinks about how much her son dotes on his little sparrow and smiles. “I don’t think being chosen family will be that bad. Now, boys, come here and we can introduce everyone and have dinner.”


End file.
